Thursday, February 25, 2010

Please See ID

I have a funny story to tell. Last Friday my husband has his "wetting down"(click on the phrase and you can read a list of other military traditions also). What that is a military promotion celebration where the military member getting promoted throws a get together for all his friends. Instead of him doing it all by himself, he went in with two other guys that got promoted around the same time to have a larger "party". We all had a great time by the way! At the end of the night the guys paid with credit cards and just split the bill. We went about the rest of our weekend not doing much but enjoying the nice weather and doing a few errands. Then Monday we took the girls to their appointments and have been making dinner at home each night thereafter. Wednesday nights are family nights at our house and so we decided that after dinner we would all take a trip to Sonic to grab a sundae for the girls. Before we left I decided to get the dishwasher ready to run for the night. At our house we do a load of dishes every night so when ran out of detergent I knew we would get behind and I really didn't want that to happen. Where I am going with this is that Wal Mart is on the way to Sonic so I convinced my hubby to run in and get a bottle. When he comes out he has this look on his face like something was wrong. I ask him what was going on and he said that his PIN wouldn't work for his debit card. We both thought that was really odd but figured that something was just wrong with it and we would call the bank and find out what was going on. When he was on the phone getting ready to type in his acct number he looked a little closer only to realize that he had one of the other guys cards that he had the party with. Apparently, on Friday night they gave him the wrong card back and since it looks exactly like his he didn't even think twice about it. At that point we had to retrace all of our steps over the past week to figure out where all we had used the card. We remembered using it at the mall at the food court in two different places and also early that day at the pet store. The funniest part about all of this is that my husband said that when he used it at the pet store they asked to see his ID. He thought it was because we were getting a military discount and they needed to see it for that but in reality the back of the other guy's card says SEE ID and they were checking it. But, I guess they didn't look good enough because they didn't even question him at all. Then he remembers that the Japanese food place in the mall also asked to see his ID and he showed it and they still let him use it. So, the moral of the story is...writing SEE ID on the back of your credit card may seem like a good way to protect your card but in reality just because they are checking the ID doesn't mean they are actually looking at it. We had some good laughs about that last night!

3 comments:

Simply Complex said...

Oh my word, that is insane. The whole scenario of the mix-up and the fact that two people checked the ID and didn't even read it. Seriously, why even bother then???

Meant to be a mom said...

Oh my gosh what a funny and sort of scary story. Seriously people. "Let me see your id" even though it doesn't match at all to your card. I can't believe no one caught that.
How funny.
I guess the moral of the story is,get insurance through your bank and make sure that no-one steels your card.
How funny.

Sonya said...

That really really really makes me mad!!! Coming from working at a financial institution that is! That is why there is so much ID theft and fraud because the people just don't take the time to look and match the names and the signatures and all that. UGH!!!

Ok sorry for my rant. That is kind of funny but that sucks that you were using the wrong card the whole time. Hope it didn't cause too many problems. :)